/r/JorgeLuisBorges
Jorge Luis Borges
A resource hub to encourage discussion about the life and work of the great Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.
Resources: http://www.borges.pitt.edu/
"He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction" - J. M. Coetzee
/r/JorgeLuisBorges
Hello! I'm the president of my high school's philosophy club and am doing a meeting on Jorge Luis Borges. I have an idea of what I want to mention, but I would like to take suggestions on what I could/should bring up and thought experiments to talk about. Comment underneath if you have any!
Hello! I was wondering if anybody here could recommend any books that are similar to “The Book of Imaginary Beings.” I really enjoyed it when I read it and I’m having a hard time finding anything quite like it, that gives detailed and nuanced information about imaginary/ mythical creatures, while being well researched and not made for children. If anyone has any recommendations, I really appreciate it!
I just read the story called "Undr" that has been puclished in "The Book of Sand". I'm really confused about the story. I tried asking Chatgpt 3.5, but it didn't even knew that the stroy exists. So I wanted to hear your opinions about the story.
Cheers
My prompt: write a short story written as if it was written by Jorge Luis Borges
Output:
In the dusty archives of the Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires, there exists a curious document. It is a single sheet of paper, tucked away in the bindings of an ancient, forgotten manuscript. The document contains a curious tale, one that I am certain you will find, dear reader, as perplexing and intriguing as I did. It is said that the document was written by a man who lived in the time of the great Jorge Luis Borges, and that he, in a moment of infinite wisdom, had discovered the secret to a labyrinth that exists within the words we speak and the thoughts we think. Here, then, is the story of the Labyrinth of Babel.
In the far reaches of the Argentine pampas, on the desolate plains where the wind weaves its mournful song, there stood an inconspicuous and solitary building. It was a humble structure, made of mud and straw, and bore no signs or markings to indicate its purpose. It was said that a man named Alejandro Funes, a man with no extraordinary qualities, was its sole inhabitant.
Alejandro lived a life of solitude, consumed by an obsession with language and its limits. He would spend his days laboring over archaic volumes, deciphering ancient scripts and obscure languages, consumed by the need to unlock the secret at the heart of language itself. Late at night, he would sit in the dim light of his study, scribbling furiously in a tattered notebook, the pages filled with the names of forgotten deities, lost cities, and impossible geometries.
The people of the nearby village, who knew him only as the quiet recluse with a penchant for languages, could not comprehend the nature of his obsession. They whispered about him in hushed tones, telling stories of madness and heresy, of a man who sought to unravel the very fabric of creation. They would speak of the labyrinth he was said to be constructing, a labyrinth hidden within the very words and phrases he studied.
In truth, Alejandro Funes was no mere eccentric, but a genius of unparalleled intellect. He had discovered the existence of an invisible labyrinth, a maze that existed not in the physical world, but in the very nature of language itself. The labyrinth was a complex web of words, sounds, and meanings, an intricate puzzle that, when solved, would grant its discoverer access to the infinite library of Babel.
The library, a vast repository of knowledge and wisdom, was said to contain the collected thoughts and experiences of every person who had ever lived. It was a place of unimaginable wonder, where the works of every writer, philosopher, and poet were gathered, alongside the secret histories of forgotten empires and the last words of nameless saints. The library was the key to eternal life, to knowledge beyond comprehension, to the very secrets of existence itself.
And so, Alejandro dedicated his life to unraveling the labyrinth, certain that the secrets it contained would grant him the power to transcend his own mortality. He scoured the earth for ancient texts, studied the languages of the world, and learned the secret arts of the mystics and magicians, all in pursuit of the key that would unlock the doors to the library.
One night, as he sat in his study, Alejandro came across a passage in an ancient manuscript, a passage that seemed to hold the key to the labyrinth. He read it aloud, his voice trembling with anticipation, as the words wove a spell that seemed to ripple through the air around him. Suddenly, he felt the world shift, as if he had been transported to some other place, or perhaps to no place at all.
There, before him, stood the entrance to the Labyrinth of Babel, an immense structure of shimmering light and shadow that seemed to stretch out in all directions, its passages and corridors extending into infinity. The labyrinth was a place where words and phrases took on a life of their own, where ideas and concepts danced and tangled, forming shifting patterns that were at once beautiful and terrifying.
Alejandro stepped into the labyrinth, his heart pounding with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. He navigated its twisting passages and infinite corridors, guided only by his knowledge of language and the secret patterns he had discerned over the years. For days, he wandered through the maze, losing himself in its complexities, his mind stretched to the breaking point by the sheer enormity of the task before him.
He encountered dead ends and false starts, cryptic riddles and inscrutable symbols, each one leading him deeper into the labyrinth. Slowly, he began to see the patterns hidden within its passages, the secret connections between words and ideas that formed the very fabric of the maze. His mind raced as he pieced together the fragments of knowledge he had acquired over the years, searching for the key that would unlock the doors to the library.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Alejandro stumbled upon the heart of the labyrinth. There, in a chamber bathed in ethereal light, stood the great Library of Babel, its towering shelves filled with ancient tomes and forgotten manuscripts, its hallowed halls echoing with the whispers of ages past. He had done it; he had found the key to the labyrinth and unlocked the doors to the infinite library.
But as he stepped into the library, an overwhelming sense of dread filled his heart. He realized, with a sickening certainty, that the labyrinth he had conquered was but the first of many, and that the library itself was merely another maze, a labyrinth of knowledge and wisdom that stretched out before him, its secrets locked away behind a thousand doors.
Alejandro Funes, the man who had sought to unravel the very fabric of creation, stood on the threshold of infinity, his mind shattered by the impossibility of the task before him. The labyrinth had consumed him, and in the end, he was lost within its depths, unable to find his way out of the maze of words and ideas that had once been his obsession.
And so, the story of Alejandro Funes, the man who dared to enter the Labyrinth of Babel, became a cautionary tale, a whispered warning about the dangers of seeking knowledge beyond the limits of human comprehension. But the labyrinth remains, hidden within the words we speak and the thoughts we think, waiting for the next brave soul to unlock its secrets and step into the realm of the infinite.
I have a memory of reading an essay by Borges about some mundane thing. I read it in the 70's. Was it a table? A pencil ? I remember finding it imaginative. But I can't seem to find it
Borges and Bioy Casares wrote the screenplays to two movies and I can never find them and when I do they don’t have English subtitles. Anyone know where I can find copies with English subtitles?
Hi. I'm sorry. I'm a teenager. My attention span is that of a goldfish.
I can pay extreme attention to something that I am actually interested in, but unless if I can get hooked in within the first couple of sentences, I'm probably just going to ignore the whole thing.
Someone managed to sell me on the Library of Babel, just by saying:
10 to the power of 1,830,000 is (apparently- I've been asking on all the math subreddits how people even calculated this) the number of books in the Library of Babel which is a very large, but not infinite, library that contains every 410-page book that is possible- Your entire diary is in here as well as millions of copies with just 1 letter misspelled.
Once I heard that, I was sold. I read the story, I read analyses, and as said before, I've been driven insane spending the last 2 hours trying to figure out how people even calculated the number of books in here.
But then I heard someone say that apparently the guy who wrote this has written a ton of stories that actually has plots to them, and has really interesting ideas like this.
The only one I remember them mentioning is a story about: "The Alpha" which is apparently a point in the universe that, if you were to stand at it, you would be able to see every other point in the entire universe.
That sounds interesting, but I can't put the life of me remember which story was supposed to have that gimmick.
And whenever I try to look up an article that can briefly explain the gimmick of each of his stories, it keeps just boring me to death.
I just want to know the gimmicks man, that's all I want.
Can someone please just sell me on a few of these stories by just telling me the title and just briefly explaining what the cool idea is please?:)
You can get this podcast on your preferred podcast app, but here is the base link.
Gene Wolfe was an open fan of JLB and it shows in his work.
In The Book of the New Sun there is a Borges cut-out character. And lots of references to his stories and books. So at the Rereading Wolfe podcast we've begun winding our way through Borges's entire oeuvre and discussing them at length.
You can see everything done so far on the Borges Collection Page (publicly viewable)
You can access the Patron page HERE to become a Journeyman patron for $2 and listen to patron episodes all month long, if that's your cuppa tea.
Hello, I've been seeking, as the title states, the Ulysses translation Jorge Luis Borges wrote, but I had a hard time finding it. He didn't translate all of the book rather just the end. I read up about it and was interested in reading it but failed to locate it. If anyone could help it would be appreciated. (Not sure if that particular piece was ever translated to English, though I doubt it given the redundancy that would cause, but I'm looking for the Spanish translation, of for some reason someone translated his translation that would be interesting in its own right but again I'm looking for his Spanish translation, thank you in advance)
Borges deserves a good series like this one.
Guys, which book can one start with for reading Borges ??
I thought Borges fans might find this interesting, a literary essay on Jorge Luis Borges. He's my favorite writer of short fiction but, admittedly, I knew very little about his life, so this was an informative read.
Thirty years ago, the world lost a great literary mind—the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Today, Elizabeth Hyde Stevens revisits the financial conditions that produced this life of pure literature, finding unexpected hope in the darkest period of Borges’ forgotten past.
Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin
tired mans utopia